Hell or oblivion... (Main Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Saturday, May 08, 2010, 22:45 (1138 days ago) @ desi

Yes, Desi, this is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote recently that we are searching for a new "theology, Christology and ecclesiology". It upset one person to the point where they re-posted it on Cooees from the Remnant. Ultimately I think our starting point has to be in our understanding, as imprecise and imperfect as it might be given that we are dealing with "a Mystery" (the Mystery?) and a concept that is "totally other", with our understanding of God and the nature of the relationship God calls us collectively, and individually, into. God is not "up there" or "out there". For each of us he is "in here" — closer than our closest friend in the sort of phrases that Roch is always reminding us of. But while the likes of Benedict insist on taking us back to the quaint beliefs, devotionals and pieties of a by-gone era there is fat chance of advancing very far in the questions that do need exploration. Benedict seems perpetually locked into only wanting to appease what he calls "the simple people" and "the little people". At least in the educated world most people no longer think of themselves in those terms. I think we are now largely "on our own" to make sense of this stuff and I agree with you the starting point has to be these very fundamental questions of how we envisage God as either this "remote figure" — an "elsewhere God" as Michael Morwood has labelled him — or a God who is at the very core of the "being" of each one of us and the challenge we each face is how do we "listen" to the guidance of that "inner God" — how do we discern between the genuine "promptings of the Spirit" and sort that out from the cacophony made by our own ego and anxieties?

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]